The Frankenstein Bowls...

Yesterday I decided to make a green and black bowl to go with my Haunted House bowls. I googled Halloween coloring pages, and found this picture of Frankenstein....and thought~ Perfect!! I used Scuply III to make the cane: Moss, Magenta, and Black. It took me a couple of hours to get it built, and was so excited to see what the cane looked look once I rolled it out, I forgot to take pictures!! One day I'll have to do a tutorial on how to break down a coloring book picture to make a cane.

Here's what I got. At first I was not impressed...and was rather irritated that I had 'wasted' all this clay. But, then I realized something~ it's all in how you look at it. Have you ever seen this picture?? Depending on how you look at it, you either see an old lady or a young lady. It reminded me of how my cane is....When I first looked at the cane, I saw the nose as being only the line that goes down the middle of his face, and thought the wide-u shaped line under that was his mouth....BUT, then I looked at the original picture and seen the what I thought was the mouth is actually part of his nose. And the 2 lines at the bottom of his face is his mouth.....have I lost you yet? LOL!! I like him much better when I look at him this way!!!
And yes......I made bowls! Lots of bowls....It's amazing what you can do when you actually turn off the computer!! Hehe! Way too much eye-candy for one person!!
This last picture is of the baked bowls. As you can see they came out a little dark. But, honestly, it just enhances the color in Frankenstein!

It worked!!!

Good Morning! Do I have something special for you today....I'm exicited, Are you exicited???

Here's my Haunted House cane.....as you can see I filled in the outside with orange....I even added a picket fence!!

After I got cane put together, it was time to reduce it. This is a very scary process....you never know what you'll end up with!! But as you can see.....it worked!! I was so excited!!And Ta-da!! A haunted house bowl!! Isn't it cute!!LOL, and of course I couldn't just make one.....

Practice, Practice, Practice!!

The first rule to keeping the cat hair out of your polymer clay, is to keep the cat away from the polymer clay. Obviously, my cats could care less.....actually, I'm lucky to have a spot on the table! At least they're not laying in the middle of it! LOL!! Chris (http://www.candidcanine.blogspot.com/) emailed me yesterday, and suggested I make some orange and black bowls.......Halloween is right around the corner, and what witch wouldn't want a Halloween bowl??? I used Fimo-Soft polymer clay for the first time..., I normally use SculpyIII......here's what I think. It is much easier to mush up and work, although I found it a little difficult to mix colors. I do like the look of it after it has been baked, it's shiny!!...and I didn't use any sealer on it, it's just the way it bakes. I do believe I will use this clay again, but I still like my Sculpy!

I tried to make a pumpkin cane....my only excuse is that it has been awhile since I made a cane, so they will get better! My son picked a bowl up off the table, and asked if I had made another mushroom one, and I replied with "It's suppose to be a pumpkin..." Either it was what I said, or the way I said it, but I haven't seen him laugh that hard in a long time!!! I didn't think they were that bad! LOL.........oh well....back to the drawing board.
See...it kinda looks like a pumpkin?? Right??
At least they're black and orange, right Chris.....

The Mushroom bowls

After I made the rose bowl, I dug a little deeper into my trash box to see what else I had. And I found my purple mushroom cane!! I've always loved this cane, but have never really done anything productive with it. If you look close you will see that each bowl has one mushroom hiding in it....pretty neat, huh. The 2 circles things at the bottom are slices that I took from the cane, and then cooked as is, so I had a record of what I did. Ok, we're not going to discuss the fact, that Otis is not even suppose to be up here...but how in the world is this comfortable?? Well, at least he hasn't pushed the frog, over the edge, to it's death yet.

Not another bowl...

Stop! Don't throw those scraps away! Not even the ugly ones....you know what I'm talking about....all those ends from the canes you have hiding in your collection. Yeah, I do it too.....I'm a hoarder! LOL!! I have a whole container of scraps that I have been holding on to for years. The container is filled with canes that didn't turn out right, left overs from old canes and all all those little pieces that are left over after a project. I can't just throw them away....honestly I've tried....Well, this past week, I have been throwing these dried-up, ugly scraps into my mini food processor. See what happens? From this, I can make these......
These are the 'vessels' (haha) I made on Saturday. Yeah, I know there getting too big for miniatures......unless you want to use them for planters.....now that would be neat!Here's an over shot of the 'collection' I'm working on.....Did I tell you that when I finally find something that I really like to make, I go a little over board with it........Hahahaa.....And these are the ones that I made on Sunday, here I'm starting to mix blends....see the one in the back left, I used 3 different kinds of scraps for this. And do you see the dark one right underneath of that..........that's one that I made using the scraps from the first picture.This next one turning out neat. I decided to try and put a slice of the cane I used in the middle of the bowl. Can you see the rose?
and Poor Otis was so bored watching me make all those bowls, that he fell asleep in my shoe~

These are very addicting!

Ok, I must admit, I am addicted to these little pots and bowls! The ones in these pictures I made yesterday....I will post the ones I made today, later. These were all made with my polymer clay scraps, my favorite is the green one in the back! Do you see the one in the middle. Yeah, this is what happens when your bf thinks he can do it better. Mine weren't symmetrical enough for him, whatever that means......lol........you see what he did to his, right! Well, I baked it anyways and told him that when we build his man's room, he can put it on one of the shelves and we'll pretend it's a great sculpture! I even made a few pink bowls. You know, these might make for some neat sinks in the doll house? Just need to drill a hole in the middle and add a straw for the pipes.......

Is she on her way yet???

Yeah, I'm still here! I'm just taking a little time to relax. Everything is starting to go back to normal around here, so hopefully my muse will come along and hit me in the head! I really need something to motivate me! I did take out some of my old polymer clay canes today. I have a whole box of them.....from that time when I couldn't get enough of making canes. Hahaha, I have a problem, when I enjoy making something, I make tons of it, then stash it away. One day, some one is going to come along and make me drag it all out and sell it. Until then, I'll just keep hoarding it!

The first bowl was from a cane I made while playing with a clay extruder. I like how it looks with fruit in it!I love this next bowl. The colors are so bright!

My clay is slowly sneaking into the living room, that's the first sign that the muse is coming...she slides in quietly, then before I know it, the living room will be over taken by clay!

What to do with the scraps?

I just don't understand what I did to this computer to make it change like it did. I want to be able to upload pictures and look at them as I type this blog. Instead, I get the html code for it. I don't think I'm going to like blogging like this!!
Any ideas as to what I did, or how I can get it back, I'd be very grateful!

Ok, so I drug out the clay yesterday, and played.
Nothing serious....just wanted to see what I had. I did use some scrap clay to make some bowls, vases, and planters. Not very pretty, I know I can do better than this, but like I said I wasn't making anything serious. I more or less just wanted to 'play', and I also got some of those scrap piles I had taken care of.
Here's how I did one of the vases..to make the scrap ball more interesting, I put a bunch of scraps together, then sliced through the middle of it to get this:..Now that you have a neat piece of clay to work with, roll a small ball of it out.Then form it around the end of a pencil.Next, roll the pencil on a flat surface until all the sides are about even.Then you can use a blade to cut the top off so that it is even all the way around. This is just a basic idea of how to make 'vessels' with polymer clay.

Another of my favorite things to do is to put my scraps in my mini food processor. Now, these scraps must be dried and old for this to work. If you need to use fresh clay, lay it out on some paper the night before, and the paper will help suck some of that moisture out. I do believe this may be called leaching...? Ok, so cut it up into smaller pieces and throw it into the food processor. It should look like this after a minute or so.... I love this stuff.....wouldn't a 'cork' floor be neat using this stuff? Or a table top...oh my, there's lots to do with it.....I made a mini bowl with it. Just wrapped up a big marble with Saran wrap, and molded some of the clay around it. I was a little more happy with this one! Here's another bowl I made using some scraps and the pencil trick.
There's a lot you can do with scrap clay. I save all of it, and evenually it all gets used!

**Warning: You can NOT use the mini food processor for food once you've used it for clay. Polymer clay and food DO NOT mix!!!